Professor Finds Herself On Stage To Share Her Passion For Teaching

MIDDLETOWN — C Staring at a TV camera as a boom microphone hovered inches above her head, film professor Jeanine Basinger launched into a passionate defense of teaching.

Suddenly, she broke the spell.

"I forgot to put my earrings on!" she exclaimed. "We have to start over!" Basinger, an experienced interview subject, was only joking. She needed to do something to keep from taking herself too seriously, she explained later.

Such self-deprecating humor was crucial to keeping her sanity Monday.

Basinger, chairwoman of Wesleyan University's film department and curator of its film archives, spent Monday talking about herself and her profession to a film crew shooting a public service commercial about teachers to be broadcast this fall on national television.

The series, "Portrait of a Teacher," is being sponsored by the Campbell Soup Co. and is designed to highlight the importance of teaching. Twenty-two teachers from throughout the country will be profiled in 30-second vignettes. Basinger was the only college professor and the only teacher from Connecticut selected.

Produced by R.E.R. Entertainment Inc., a New York-based production company, the commercials are scheduled to be broadcast on various networks beginning Oct. 28 and run for two years. The spot featuring Basinger is expected to be broadcast in November and periodically during the next two years.

Other teachers selected include a junior high school teacher in Harlem who dresses up as a circus clown, a 91-year-old teacher in Milwaukee who brings students together with senior citizens and a teacher in rural North Dakota who works in a one-room schoolhouse.

Basinger was selected because of her reputation as a dynamic teacher and scholar, who as curator of the Wesleyan Film Archives has earned the trust of filmmakers such as Frank Capra, Elia Kazan and Clint Eastwood, said Robert Riesenberg, the series' executive producer.

Although all the teachers are inspiring, Riesenberg said, Basinger was a particularly good subject.

"She makes good TV," he said. "She's very articulate, enthusiastic and right to the point." Well, not always.

At one point, after Basinger had given a nearly 10-minute monologue on the importance of teaching and the need for teachers to commit themselves completely to their students, producer/director Steve Alpert did a little coaching.

What you just said was fine, Alpert told Basinger, but could you do it again -- and this time condense it a little? "I'm an academic," Basinger shot back, laughing. "We never condense. I can expand." Basinger, who has appeared previously on the CBS Evening News, "20/20" and even Entertainment Tonight, later showed her television prowess.

When Alpert asked her what she would be if she were not a teacher, she first answered that she would lie under a tree and read a book. Then, realizing Alpert was satisfied with that answer, she ad-libbed a better response: "I would become a professional basketball player," she said. "I would enter the NBA and try out for the Boston Celtics." Those in the lounge of the archives, where the commercial was shot, erupted in laughter.

Basinger, who has taught at Wesleyan for 22 years, said after the interview that she was honored to have been chosen, even if she was slightly put off by the questions. She was not bothered so much by the presence of the camera as by the subject , Basinger said.

"It is a very strange experience to be asked about teaching," she said. "The truth is, I don't think about it all that much." On camera, though, her love of teaching came through loud and clear.

"People give their children over to teachers," she said. "It is a profession that is terribly important to our culture, our society, our future. The shaping of the future is really in the hands of teachers." Afterward, Basinger acknowledged that she has not really thought about what it will mean to have her face on national TV for two years.